A 7.2 magnitude earthquake rocked Irian Jaya, Indonesia on Saturday, according to USGS.
Tsunami alerts have been issued after the massive earthquake.
According to USGS, the earthquake was 58 km (36 miles) deep.
More details are awaited.
India’s Olympic medallist Vijender Singh has not shown up for the boxing trial camp in Patiala. Participation in the boxing camp is necessary for the boxer’s selection. Boxing Federation Vice President Nivaran Mukherjee said, “Vijender hasn’t come for the trials. If he doesn’t attend the camp tomorrow he will fail to qualify or the next tournament.”
Two college students, both brothers, were stabbed to death and one of their friends seriously injured in a clash between two groups of students over a love affair in the district, police said on Friday.
Police identified the deceased as Suresh, a 21-year-old BBA student and Arunkumar, a third year engineering student.
A Senthil, who was injured in the clash at Muthupatti late Thursday night, has been admitted to the government hospital at Madurai, police said.
—PTI
Suspended Gujarat police officer NK Amin, arrested by the CBI in the alleged fake encounter of Mumbai girl Ishrat Jahan and three others near here in 2004, on Friday told a court that he was tortured by the investigation agency.
Amin, a suspended Deputy Superintendent of Police, was arrested on Thursday.
“I was severely beaten up and also verbally abused by the CBI officers in custody,” Amin accused when he was produced before a Special CBI Judge.
A British tourist was found dead inside a houseboat in the Dal Lake in Srinagar on Saturday after being allegedly molested by another foreign tourist from Netherlands, the police said. The woman was reportedly found in a pool of blood inside her room in the houseboat.
The Dutch tourist has been arrested in connection with the murder while he was reportedly trying to flee. The police are now probing the case.
Six people died and at least 500 people fell seriously ill after drinking contaminated ground water in the Loni area of Ghaziabad, officials said on Friday. Hospital and police officials said that residents of Prem Nagar in Ghaziabad complained of drowsiness and fell unconscious after drinking tap water on Thursday. Some of them began vomitting.
Six people died within hours of treatment while about 500 were still being treated. “In some places the water and sewer pipelines are broken and the water from them has got mixed,” said Ghaziabad District Magistrate SBS Ranga Rao.
A 24-year-old youth allegedly committed suicide at his residence here with his family alleging that police atrocities forced him to take the extreme step.
Sukhbir, a resident of Rajeev Colony, hanged himself inside his room last night, police said.
The family members alleged that Sukhbir was often rounded up by the police for interrogation and annoyed over the issue he committed suicide.
Police, however, said that he was called to police station in connection with probe related to incidents of crime.
The body has been sent for post mortem, they said.
–PTI
After causing a stir for calling Kamala Harris as “the best-looking attorney general”, US President Barack Obama has now apologised to her.
On Thursday, Obama had said, “She is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake,” praising Harris, who is the first woman and first Indian-American to be elected as the Attorney-General of California.
The number of people living on the Earth will stabilise around the middle of the century, scientists have predicted.
The findings, obtained with a model used by physicists, coincide with the United Nations’s downward forecasts, Spain based Scientific Information and News Service (SINC) reported.
According to UN estimates, the world population in 2100 will be within a range between 15.8 billion people according to the highest estimates – high fertility variant – and 6.2 billion according to the lowest – low fertility variant – a figure that stands below the current 7 billion.
At least 25 Indian fishermen have been arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy for allegedly poaching in the country’s waters.
Naval spokesman Commander Kosala Warnakulasuriya said that the fishermen were arrested on Friday night off the coast of Karainagar in the northern Jaffma peninsula for violating Sri Lanka’s international maritime boundary.
Their six trawlers were also seized. They were handed over to the police in the islet of Kayts for further action, the Navy added.
Six persons were injured when they received electric shock from a tap during ablution before prayers at a Mosque in the city Friday.
They had gathered around the tap for ‘Vazu’ (ablution) before the Friday prayers at the Madina Mosque when electric current passed through the pipeline, police said.
They were taken to the district hospital where the condition of three was stated to be serious.
–PTI
The far-reaching Right To Education Act, now in its fourth year of implementation, obliges the central and state governments to provide eight years of free and compulsory education to all children between 6 and 14 years of age. But the country is a long way from achieving that goal. India has always been a land of extreme dichotomies and the most extreme is that while the country is aspiring to become an economic superpower, it has an education system that is failing generations of children.
A policeman was killed and three civilians were injured when a bomb strapped to a donkey exploded at a police post in Afghanistan.
The animal blew up in front of the checkpoint in Laghman province, reported Daily Mail Friday citing local government spokesperson.
Taliban militants were responsible for the bomb, which was detonated by remote control, the official added.
Militants are coming up with new ways to thwart stepped up security measures in Afghanistan.
–IANS
Agri-bank Nabard provided Rs 12,867 crore in loans to Andhra Pradesh government and banks in the state during 2012-13, a senior official said today. “The loans given to the state government and banks in Andhra Pradesh by NABARD registered a growth of 39 per cent and stood at Rs 12,867 crore during 2012-13, crossing the Rs 10,000 crore mark for the first time. Out of the Rs 12,867 crore assistance, Rs 7,986 crore of which was related to crop loan given to farmers,” Nabard (AP) Chief General Manager K Ramachandran Nair told reporters here.
Actor Imran Khan is wonder-struck at the way his Once Upon A Time in Mumbaai Again (OUATIMA) co-star Akshay Kumar remains cool and chilled out on the movie sets.
“No, he is actually an amazingly chilled out guy,” said Imran, when asked if Akshay is a bully on the sets.
“He is so massively successful, but you won’t get a sense of it when you are talking to him.
Because he talks to everybody in the same way, he will happily sit on the floor, so you’ll feel he is just a cool guy and he is not one of the biggest stars of the country,” he added.
Bollywood actress Huma Qureshi, who rose to fame with her performance in Gangs of Wasseypur, is all set to make her TV debut with Ekta Kapoor’s show Ek Thhi Naayka.Ek Thhi Naayka is a thrilling eight-part promotional series for Vishal Bhardwaj and Balaji Motion Pictures’ upcoming supernatural thriller – Ek Thi Daayan starring Emraan Hashmi, Kalki Koechlin, Konkona Sen Sharma and Huma.
This week audiences will be treated to a Lucknow based story starring Aamna Shariff and Bhanu Uday along with a surprise entry by Huma, who plays a friend to the couple and helps them out of the misery.
Raising the spectre of a renewed conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, a US study has warned that Islamabad may well turn to trusted Pakistani militant groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), to do its bidding.
For the past two decades LeT, the group behind the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that killed 166 people, has steadily emerged as one of Pakistan’s most lethal and capable militant proxy groups, according to the study.
Bajaj Auto Ltd today said it plans to roll out 5,000 units of its much-delayed four-seater “quadricycle” codenamed RE-60 from its Aurangabad plant.
The company plans to roll out 5,000 units a month, to begin with, Bajaj Auto’s Managing Director Rajiv Bajaj said, adding that though it has an in-principle go-ahead from the government, commercial production would happen only after a government-appointed committee, set up to define the category of this vehicle, submits its report.
There is a huge responsibility to impart quality education to the young generation to make them employable, Union Minister of State for HRD Jitin Prasada said on Friday.
“India needs to strive hard for quality education for all. It is our responsibility to educate the population and make them employable,” he claimed.
The minister was speaking at the inauguration of a three-day international conference organised by the Indian Distance Education Association (IDEA) in collaboration with the Directorate of Distance Education of Maulana Azad National Urdu University at Gachibowli here.
Two days after attributing the difficult conditions facing the telecom sector to a Supreme Court judgement, Telecom and IT Minister Kapil Sibal on Friday said that disagreeing with the verdict did not mean he has attacked the court.
“Nobody has attacked any court. If I disagree with contours of a judgement that doesn’t mean I’m attacking the court. Nobody has attacked the court,” Sibal said in an interview to a TV channel.
At least five students from Odisha’s KIIT University are set to participate in an annual aero-design competition to be held in California, USA next week, the university said Saturday.
Organised by the US-based Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), in collaboration with organisations like National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and aerospace company Lockheed Martin, the contest, Aero Design West 2013, would be held from April 12-14, 2013.
A British tourist was found murdered on a houseboat in Srinagar Saturday. Police have detained a Dutch national suspected to have committed the murder, Kashmir police chief said.
Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kashmir Abdul Ghani Mir told IANS: “A 24-year-old British national was found murdered in a local houseboat this morning. A Dutch national, De-wit Richard, has been detained for investigations in this connection”.
Underworld don Dawood Ibrahim is still allegedly laundering blood money through a public sector bank’s branch in the tax havens in Nassau in Bahamas, according to a TV channel investigation.
The channel said in a press release that the investigation showed large volumes of funds belonging to terror groups based in Afghanistan and Pakistan are being handled by the fugitive don.
Raking up the 2002 post-Godhra riots issue, Congress on Friday appeared to compare Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi with ‘yamraj’, the Lord of Death in Hindu mythology.
The party also said it feared the “consequences” if Modi was to become Prime Minister, a day after the Chief Minister made the strongest-ever indication of his prime ministerial ambitions.
A Pakistani prisoner on Friday allegedly ended his life by hanging himself inside the toilet of Radhanpur sub-jail in North Gujarat’s Patan district.
“The incident took place when Parbatsinh Amarsinh Koli (40) was taken out of the cell for bathing along with other prisoners,” Radhanpur sub-jailor K L Desai said.
“Koli then headed towards toilet and hanged himself with the clothes he was wearing in the toilet,” Desai said.